Showing Archived Posts

At first blush, we think of museums as illustrious storehouses of art and artifacts such as the Smithsonian Institution’s complex of 19 scientific, historical and art museums on Washington’s National Mall. But in ever-increasing numbers, curious “cultural tourists” are also poking their heads into much more modest and personal houses of treasures. Houses, literally. “House […]

Many studies have concluded that the idyllic American childhood — wherever it existed in middle- and upper-class homes, or in our literature and imagination — is a thing of the past. The kind of carefree childhood in which kids mostly minded their manners and their parents, read books without being assigned to, and whiled away […]

It’s a good thing that U.S. warships are inanimate objects and don’t have feelings. When their seagoing days are done, the end for most of them is not pretty. Now it’s true that a few are sold to friendly foreign governments and are still sailing the deep blue seas. And 48 U.S. Navy […]

It’s hard to pinpoint Washington, D.C.’s, No. 1 tourist attraction. But somewhere near the top of the list has to be the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, which is always jammed with tourists and even has a huge annex, open to the public, out in the boonies near Dulles International Airport. If you […]

I know, an ode is a lyric poem, something short and sometimes sung. I’m no poet, I don’t do “short” well, and you don’t want me to sing. But this story is an encomium to majestic train terminals between which America’s passenger trains once traveled each day by the hundreds. I should point out that […]

America’s most famous traveler — besides Carol and me, I say with a wink — was actually a Frenchman: Alexis de Tocqueville. He rode all over the young United States in the 1830s and produced a remarkable study of the American people. What amazed this young political thinker more than anything else was the influence […]

Writing about Ellis Island last time, I mentioned that the U.S. Supreme Court ended years of controversy over exactly where the old immigration station — now a museum — officially sits. New York Harbor, of course. In New Jersey waters, not New York’s, it turns out. Which got me thinking about another, nearby saga of […]

I have just returned from a cross-country trip, west to east. I flew to California to collect Carol, who had spent the better part of three months taking photographs in that vast and varied state, and it was time to drive her and her caravan’s worth of equipment home. We crossed through drought country — […]

A lot of Internet tech talkers are preparing a coffin for electronic mail. Some are even shoveling dirt on it. And while it’s pretty obvious that email is not dead dead at age 41, it’s looking pretty pallid. Those of us who must swim through a daily email stream of spam, scams, advertising pitches and […]

It’s fantasy season in the United States. Now, of course, one can fantasize about being a princess or drift into reverie about winning the lottery, any time of year. I’m talking about a specialized kind of fantasy. An ongoing, all-consuming, often dead-serious one that’s geared to different seasons. An obsession, shared by an estimated 35 […]

Ted Landphair

This is a far-ranging exploration of American life by a veteran Voice of America “Americana” reporter and essayist.

Ted writes about the thousands of places he has visited and written about as a broadcaster and book author. Ted Landphair’s America often showcases the work of his wife and traveling companion, renowned American photographer Carol M. Highsmith.